Disney World Will Serve Over 400 Plant-Based Menu Items Starting Next Month

Earlier this year, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom released its own Plant-Based Cuisine Guide, a color-coded brochure that listed all of the Orlando theme park's vegetarian and meat-free menu items. Disney's graphic designers and its printing company—come on, you know the Mouse doesn't go to FedEx Office—are probably working overtime to update it, now that the company has announced the addition of several hundred new plant-based foods.

On Tuesday, Disney Parks announced that it is making a significant increase to the number of vegetarian and meat-free options that it serves throughout the park and at its resort hotels. By the time it rolls out all of these new foods, beverages, desserts, and snacks, Disney guests will be able to choose from more than 400 items that are made without meat, eggs, dairy, or honey.

Disney Parks

These plant-based additions will start to appear at Disney World's major quick-service restaurants on October 1 before being launched at its table-service restaurants two days later. (And don't worry, West Coasters: Disneyland is expected to get its own newly expanded plant-based menu by the spring of 2020).

"We're always looking for ways to bring more flavor, innovation, and creativity to the Disney dining experience—and guest feedback is first on the menu when we evolve our menus and develop new dishes," the company wrote on its own Disney Parks Blog. "Our guests have embraced our plant-based offerings at our parks around the globe, inspiring us to expand our menu and introduce a new menu icon, a green leaf, that will make it easier than ever to find these creations during your visit." (That symbol will look vaguely familiar to anyone who looks for the Certified Plant Based seal used on products that have been certified by the Plant Based Foods Association).

Because Disney knows how to keep a theme going, the new foods and beverages have all been designed to fit with the restaurants' existing menu items. "Our chefs spent more than a year developing new options that taste delicious and help tell the story of the location where they're served," a Disney spokesperson told Food & Wine. "For example, when you visit Casey's Corner, which serves hot dogs, you'll find a plant-based slaw dog; at Coral Reef Restaurant, you'll find Mushroom Lobster-Style Salad."

Some of the other additions include a mango and edamame-topped Shiriki Noodle Salad at the always-tropical Jungle Navigation Co. LTD Skipper Canteen in the Magic Kingdom Park, and a Chili-Spiced Crispy Fried Tofu Bowl at the Avatar-themed Satu'li Canteen at the Animal Kingdom. (Disney describes the entree as a "taste of Pandora." We'll have to take their word for it.)

We're totally into the Felucian Garden Spread from Docking Bay 7 Food & Cargo at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Disney's Hollywood Studios, because every Star Wars obsessive knows that the sentient beings who lived on the lush jungle planet Felucia were mostly farmers, and no one is reading the rest of this sentence, are they?

Anyway, the ridiculously observant menu-spotters at the Disney Food Blog noticed that some restaurants quietly added some veggie options this summer: A new Vegan Burger topped with mango salsa, and cabbage and mushroom ragoût at D-Luxe Burger in Disney Springs and a Spicy Southwest Burger with a plant-based patty at Restaurantosaurus in Disney's Animal Kingdom. (Although that one won't get a green leaf beside it on the menu, because it's topped with melted Monterey Jack cheese).

Sounds like the print shop is going to need to make a much bigger Plant-Based Cuisine Guide.